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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Great Film Resources (Subscription Giveaway!)

I was very excited to learn about a new, up and coming film resource available online. I love movies, both in my personal life, and to use in the classroom. And I'm all about "leveling the playing field" since allowing more people to get their ideas out into the world and have some recognition for them benefits everyone, in my opinion.

All images in this post used courtesy of indieflix.com

IndieFlix is an on-demand service and has thousands of films. They've given me a free trial subscription and stay tuned for how you can try them out for free as well! IndieFlix wants to spread the word out about a new release documentary called Finding Kind, that's specific to female bullying.

I'd like to tell you about a few other resources there though as well, including one that's a great tie in for social justice and global awareness in the classroom and what you might be able to use in your FSL classroom.

What started as a road-trip documentary across the U.S. to talk about how girls - and women - treat one another ultimately morphed into "Kind Campaign", an internationally recognized movement, documentary, and school assembly program. Finding Kind is written and directed by Lauren Parsekian from Orange County, California. The way girls treat each other is significant to her and finding a way to stop girl bullying in schools has been an important issue for as long as she can remember. Lauren was one of the "popular girls" in middle school. But after her clique turned against her, school became a source of stress, depression, and even frequent thoughts of suicide. Through high school and college, Lauren witnessed the same kind of "mean girl" behaviour around her. As a film student, Lauren realized the enormous good documentaries can do and decided to apply her passion for film to this issue and make a documentary about the way girls treat each other and the way it affects us. For those of you who want the Hollywood connection, Lauren is marrying Aaron Paul (star of “Breaking Bad”) some time this month.

The other great new film that's available is called Living on One and it's another documentary about what it's like to live on just a dollar a day in Guatemala. You can check out the trailer here. Not all of indieflix's films are documentaries though.

And guess what? YES, there are French movies included! Currently, there are 20 movies of varying length from France (with 7 still included once you select the "all ages" criteria). The shortest of these is a cute 4-minute animation called Trevor about a little boy who can't sleep. It's narrated by a single voice, making it relatively easy to get accustomed to for second language learners and it is subtitled in English if you choose. Although you cannot search by language, you can search by country of origin, as well as explore by themes. There is also some age-filtering options, although standards may vary from country to country, school board to school board, or ever teacher to teacher, so you are always the best judge of what is appropriate for your own students!

There are also Canadian independent films, which I think is tons of fun! I watched an interesting thing called System of Units that would take less than a period to view and could be used with any kind of futuristic literature, as well as when talking about reliance on social networking or even just human relationships overall.

So how can you check out IndieFlix for yourself? Here's the link to their subscription information. I'm SO stoked because IndieFlix is also allowing me to give away 10 2-month subscriptions. You don't have to be an educator to win, so feel free to pass on a link to this blog to your film aficionado cousin, neighbour or nephew. Please note that the subscriptions must be activated by July 1, so they are perfect for winding up your last few weeks of school or just for your perusal over the summer months.